Robot-Powered Restaurant Raises $18 Million

Momentum Machines has raised $18 million for their robot-powered restaurant, which includes a robot that can produce over 400 hamburgers per hour.

“In 2012, Momentum Machines debuted a robot that could crank out 400 made-to-order hamburgers in an hour,” reported Business Insider on Monday. “It’s fully autonomous, meaning the machine can slice toppings, grill a patty, and assemble and bag a burger without any help from humans.”

“The company has been working on its first retail location since at least June of last year,” they continued. “There is still no scheduled opening date for the flagship, though it’s expected to be located in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood.”

Business Insider adds that though the kitchen will be fully automated, front-of-house staff will likely still be required.

“Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient… It’s meant to completely obviate them,” he declared in 2015.

In March, a Californian fast food chain introduced a burger-flipping robot to replace employees at the grill.

“Much like self-driving vehicles, our system continuously learns from its experiences to improve over time,” said David Zito, CEO of Miso Robotics, who created the “Flippy” robot which was introduced at Caliburger earlier this year.

“Though we are starting with the relatively ‘simple’ task of cooking burgers, our proprietary AI software allows our kitchen assistants to be adaptable and therefore can be trained to help with almost any dull, dirty or dangerous task in a commercial kitchen — whether it’s frying chicken, cutting vegetables or final plating,” he continued.

Caliburger has set a target to have Flippy robots in fifty of their restaurants by 2019.